All of the marauder skills *work*, except there's a delay with Energy blast so it isnt spammable, and thus not very useful outside of gathering and using in between combos. Your skill build is highly dependent on your personal play style. However, if it's your first character and you're not very funded yet, or you plan on HP washing, I highly recommend getting one in energy charge first and then maxing super transformation and shockwave together first. You'll easily do high damage on whatever mobs you train on, and wont be reliant 100% on somersault kick. After that, you can focus on maxing energy charge (which is a major pain in the butt because it's 40 skill points- but worth it! Free constant attack pot- You won't need anything lower than red ciders), and then stun mastery. Stun mastery isnt too useful yet, because you stun best through uppercut or backspin blow but the stun doesnt last very long through either. Flash fist, while useful, is nothing compared to barrage when it comes to damage- and Without barrage to inflict a higher amount of damage with crits, you won't really be single targeting mobs as much as you will be mobbing. The only skill you'll leave unmaxed is Drain- which will be at level 11 when you hit 120. I used Level 1 Drain to solo HH up until I finished it out with 11 points at 120 and got barrage. I recommend reading through this to get an idea of which skills work and which ones dont- http://royals.ms/forum/threads/knuckle-pirate-defect-report.5685/ Feel free to ask any questions, I'm in the middle of brainstorming a guide for buccs since I absolutely love the class.
Thank you very much! I noticed that a fully charged energy bar doesn't add any weapon attack, is that true?
It does, but it doesnt show as an addition to your range. The only attack potions that would override energy charge would be anything red cider and above.
It will, your energy charge level just isnt high enough. It starts to add attack at skill level 4. It does show as an addition to range. Also, it is a known bug that energy charge currently overwrites all attack potions when it should stack instead. I cannot confirm if that part was secretly fixed at some point, but here is a screenshot I took seconds ago. It shows my range being red despite no attack potions being in use. This is caused by the weapon attack increase provided by Energy Charge. Now as for the skill build you seek, Sila here has a pretty good suggestion, though I personally would max drain cause its so awesome. I wouldn't ever follow a strict guide on how to allocate your sp during 3rd job. What you should do is focus on what will level you up faster. For my buccaneer, my entire 3rd job was spent training at wolf spiders, then himes. For wolf spiders, energy charge and drain is what will help you train the most. So, I maxed energy charge and had around 10 drain. Late 8x - Early 9x is when I moved onto himes. For himes, shockwave/transformation does wonders. So, after maxing energy charge, I decided to max out shockwave and transformation. By 120, I had maxed out shockwave, transformation, energy charge, energy drain, stun mastery, and put whatever was left into Energy Blast. Stun Mastery I did last because its just not useful until 4th job, so might as well max it last. As Sila says above, Energy Blast has a huge delay on it. This plus the fact that it only hits 2 monsters until level 11 means it is just not worth the points. You are just better off spamming somersault kick. Some players may say its better to go with spamming somersault > energy blast > somersault. It is, but the level of energy blast required for that is not worth your time. It is better to max out energy charge earlier and start on transformation/shockwave earlier.
My bad, I didnt realize it did show your range increased. It's really hard to notice because charge happens so often and I look at my stats so non-often. I think Drain /is/ awesome, too. I maxed blast over drain in hopes that if it ever gets fixed, it'll be a useful combo with dragon strike/corckscrew blow occasionally. I personally *hated* wolf spiders, but I had 80 base int all through that level as well. It was difficult to do enough damage to sustain a good killing speed- and at the time I was following a build someone /else/ had suggested to me, so I was missing out on good damage skills too. (I had gone stun mastery -> energy charge...and I regret it lol)
